R Programming for Biologists

Teaching the tools to get computers to do cool science

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Making Choices

Modify the Code 2


The following function is intended to check if two geographic points are close to one another. If they are it should return True. If they aren’t, it should return False. Two points are considered near to each other if the absolute value of the difference in their latitudes is less than one and the absolute value of the difference in their longitudes is less than one.

Fill in the _________ in the function to make it work and then use it to check if the following pairs of points are near or not and print out the answers.

def near(lat1, long1, lat2, long2):
    """Check if two geographic points are near each other""" 
    if (abs(lat1 - lat2) < 1) and (_________):
        near = True
    else:
        near = _________
    return near
  1. Point 1: latitude = 29.65, longitude = -82.33. Point 2: latitude = 41.74, longitude = -111.83.
  2. Point 1: latitude = 29.65, longitude = -82.33. Point 2: latitude = 30.5, longitude = -82.8.
  3. Point 1: latitude = 48.86, longitude = 2.35. Point 2: latitude = 41.89, longitude = 2.5.